What’s your name and position within the organisation?
I’m Ian Sollors, Head of Branded Content at Sunset+Vine.
I’ve been in my current role a little longer than I care to admit, although I started life as a researcher for Clive James at the BBC back in the days when a VHS player was the only set top box you really needed.
Give us a brief overview of Sunset+Vine as a company in general and your approach to sponsorship and partnerships specifically?
In the UK Sunset+Vine is probably better known as an award winning sports production company that redefined how sport is covered on TV through our work on cricket and the Paralympics with Channel 4. These days you can find us covering everything from Premier League football and Premiership rugby for the likes of BT, Amazon Prime Video and Channel 4 to acting as host broadcaster for the Commonwealth Games and International Cricket Council.
But that’s only half our story. The Branded Content department is part of the company’s equally successful commercial division. We’re a unique creative studio -borne out of a television background – that offers a unique content-driven approach to sport sponsorship activations for agencies, brands and federations like ExxonMobil, Ineos, Red Bull, the IOC, World Sailing and Zwift.
We’re sports fans and storytellers at heart and pride ourselves on turning brand or federation DNA into compelling content campaigns that engage and resonate with the audiences they’re aimed at because we share their passions.
What approach makes Sunset+Vine’s strategy/model unique? What is your USP/differentiator?
In a word Vision, Visibility and Value. OK that’s three but our underlying USP has always been as a one stop shop that creates compelling content that delivers eyeballs and media value in whatever way our clients choose to measure it.
We can do this because we’re involved in every aspect of the content development and delivery journey. We come up with the ideas, create the content then amplify it across digital, news, television and social.
In terms of Vision we not only devise the creative strategy but make the content as well, whether that’s a brand film, television series, event coverage or rich digital and social content.
Visibility wise our distribution and amplification services are unparalleled. Want a TV series on air with 70 broadcasters around the world. No problem. Or how about that record-breaking moment on the 10 o’clock news? We can take care of that as well. And if you want a social outreach and amplification strategy we have the expertise to make that happen both efficiently and effectively.
As a creative hub we’re also well versed in delivering tangible results – the Value – for every sponsorship activation we’re involved with, whether that’s engagement, financial ROI or more likely a combination of the two. We have the tools and resources to measure value in the way our clients want and expect.
How do you measure the effectiveness of sponsorship? What metrics do you use – and how has your approach to this evolved in recent years?
In a nutshell eyeballs and media value although measurement is always going to be dependent on the specific sponsorship activation and the platforms we are utilising.
For example, we specialise in creating and distributing sponsored television series around the world, bartering the content with broadcasters in return for a media package that includes sponsorship billboards, free TVC slots around the show and in-programme exposure for brands. In these instances our clients will typically want to know the monetary value of the media package we negotiate along with additional data on audience size, demographics and brand exposure.
If we are making and distributing a video news release however, the client might simply want to track usage on television as well as measuring engagement and impressions online.
What are some recent brands/sponsors you’ve worked with, and how have you driven results for these partners?
Although we’re a UK company some of our most successful projects have a very global outlook. Two of the most recent brands we’re particularly proud of working with are Mobil 1 and INEOS.
We’ve actually been working with Mobil 1 since 2009. Aware of our ground breaking work on another global AFP called Gillette World Sport, they asked us to create a weekly global television show that could be distributed in all their key markets to amplify their technology and involvement in Motorsport.
We came up with a show called Mobil 1 The Grid, which despite the best efforts of Covid is about to start its 13th series. That longevity and success is down to the fact that, over the years, we’ve expanded the project to embrace a full digital and social strategy, while the TV show is now shown by over 100 broadcasters on a regular basis, has secured hundreds of thousands of free TV spots for the client and delivers an ROI in excess of 20:1
The Ineos 1:59 challenge is something else we’re particularly proud of working on over the last few years. In August 2019 we won an open tender to act as production and distribution partner to Eliud Kipchoge’s sub two hour marathon attempt.
We came up with a comprehensive content plan including a suite of support programming, 25 camera live coverage and a highly interactive second screen offering to follow the race as it unfolded.
Because he needed perfect conditions to run in however, his team had earmarked an eight day window for the event – meaning a huge logistical challenge for distribution and an assumption this would need to be a digital/social offering to cater for the uncertainty of when it would take place.
Ineos had always wanted as large an audience as possible to see the event, so we persuaded them to give us a month to talk to broadcasters about taking a live event, even though we couldn’t confirm the day or date until 12 hours before Eliud started running.
Despite the odds we managed to secure 80 Live TV Broadcasters to supplement a YouTube Exclusive Live deal that delivered 1 million+ concurrent Live views online watching Kipchoge rewrite history. And just for good measure we also secured an additional 40 Million Social Video views, 8 Million Social engagements and 10,275 Broadcast news items.
What are the current trends within your business area, and how are they affecting how you work and how you deliver on strategy?
Perhaps the two most important trends for us are interconnected. The growing value of the integrated production and distribution services we can offer and the way sponsors are viewing and using different platforms.
Our turnkey approach delivers much more value to sponsorship activations, irrespective of size and scope. We can pass on budget efficiencies by streamlining the content creation and delivery process and removing duplication of roles and work. This allows enables us to offer activation on platforms like television and broadcast news that some sponsors traditionally avoided because of cost or complexity.
Aligned to this is the shift we’ve seen in the way brands and federations view these distribution platforms. From a reliance on television for sponsorship exposure, through an obsession with digital and social, we’ve reached a stage where most projects are now platform-agnostic.
Brands love the reach of television and the engagement possibilities of digital and social. But they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Mobil 1 The Grid for example started off as TV project, but now the digital and social aspect of the project is just as important.
On the other hand, even a digital-first brand like Formula E are savvy enough to realize the additional value and audience that television can deliver for their sponsorship activation. Which is why they came to us to distribute their non-live programming to TV stations around the world.
It helps that we can make television exposure an affordable option and that clients appreciate that effective digital exposure is no longer a cheaper alternative. And, yes, there are always going to be a lead platform depending on your client’s specific sponsorship aims, budgets and objectives, but it’s hard to remember the last time we were involved in a sponsorship activation that didn’t involve television, digital and social.
With sustainability and ethical environmental practices becoming more critical, how has Sunset+Vine tapped into this trend?
Both sustainability and diversity are key for us as a business.
We’re members of the albert, who are the authority on environmental sustainability for film and TV and provides a space for members of our industry to learn, collaborate, and, most importantly, act on our collective impact.
We also place huge importance on diversity. Although we’d be the first to admit we aren’t perfect, we’re invested in improving, learning and building on the work we have already done to strengthen our workforce to better reflect the audiences we produce content for.
How has sponsorship changed in your industry over the past few years? And what predictions can you make about how it’s going to change in the next five years?
For us it’s been a subtle shift from a lean back approach to lean forward one, in the sense that brands and federations are showing more interest in activating their sponsorship through content creation and distribution rather than traditional branding.
We think this is a trend that’s going to grow, especially with new platforms like Amazon and Netflix joining the sports rights market.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Content is changing, platforms are changing and audiences are changing too. Our role as a creative studio is to change with them while offering the same level of service and quality to everything we do, whether that’s a small digital project, epic brand film or impactful Television series. You’ll be surprised what we can deliver in terms of engagement and media value across television, digital and social.